Comments on: Microsoft and IE: Getting Desperate?

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 11:54:34 +0000

@Chris Pratt

You’re talking non-sense here, I’m sorry. I doesn’t matter if it is a Microsoft technology. As far as I know, anyone running Silverlight applications in their browsers won’t be using only ie.

I just said it was a great feature in IE7 and IE8 for me that no other browser supports, even if they could. That’s a good reason to have IE for me =)

By: Shevonne

Shevonne — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:08:58 +0000

I heard that IE8 is an improvement from the previous browsers, but I doubt that it can catch up to Chrome and Opera.

By: Chris Pratt

Chris Pratt — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:18:59 +0000

@Chris IE8 is the only one that supports XAML because XAML is a strickly Microsoft technology, not a standard. Microsoft threw it in to IE as a nicety for it’s .NET developers, who wouldn’t be using another browser anyways.

Anyways, the browser comparison chart was a complete joke, fully living up to Microsoft’s “if we repeat the same lies enough, they’ll be true” recent marketing approach. Particularly laughable was IE getting a win in the “Development Tools” category. True, Firefox may not come out of the box with development tools, but Web Developer Toolbar + Firebug + Firefox is unbeatable.

Oh! And site compatibility? Seems like Safari 4 is the only browser that has passed the Acid test 100, and I’m already finding rendering errors in IE8 (granted, more minor than in previous iterations of the browser).

By: danny

danny — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:24:17 +0000

>And IE has better support for Enterprise applications.

My company uses a version of SAP that was built for IE 6. There are some javascript errors, but it works okay in IE 7. Won’t even load in IE 8.

By: Skip

Skip — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:10:04 +0000

>And IE has better support for Enterprise applications.

That’s misleading. It is more accurate to say that enterprise applications have consistently developed for a product (IE) rather than a standard, and therefore enterprise app support is stronger for IE than for other browsers.

By: Simon Mackie

Simon Mackie — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:28:09 +0000

@Chris – I think most developers have IE installed, if only to test sites with it (and access the occasional site that requires it). But most savvy users don’t use it as their main browser any more – that’s Microsoft’s problem

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:05:51 +0000

One great thing about ie is the native support of XAML format.
As a .Net developer, it is useful if I want a quick preview of what the user interface I’m designing is going to look like.

As far as I know, no other browser can directly render xaml files.
So I’m keeping ie8 on my computer, among other browsers.

By: Max

Max — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:17:36 +0000

Even though Microsoft would release a Mac version of IE8 again I’d definitely not switch back to it again. Compared with almost any other browser available today no matter if it has been created by Apple, Google, the Mozilla Foundation, the team behind Opera or even small, independent development teams, it’s just the weakest browser anybody could use.

The competition and its website are really poor and sometimes I really wonder why a huge company like Microsoft approves an idea / concept like this at all.

I mean, the site looks just like one of those strange scam websites, just even worse and while having a look at it I’m basically just waiting that a popup with gambling ads suddenly opens up on my screen. :)

By: killstead

killstead — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:29:06 +0000

IE has security zones. And IE has better support for Enterprise applications.

By: Camilo Payan

Camilo Payan — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:26:02 +0000

Well the real problem, obviously, is that IE completely lacks Linux support :D